“Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.”

I love tranquil solitude.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won.

There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.

The jealous keys of truth’s eternal doors.

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes – are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Heaven’s ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.

I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers.

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead – When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed.

It’s in my genes. My mother was an opera singer. I’m clearly dramatic.

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop–you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.

Just as it demands blood, to meet bone, It’ll forever take something painful to understand pain.

Whose hearts must I break? What lies must I maintain? – Through whose blood am I to wade ?

Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.

The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood.

A thousand Dreams within me softly burn: From time to time my heart is like some oak Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.